Android/AndroidTV Placeshifter client (Discussion)

[btrcp2000]

I can post the apk but I don’t know if that’s okay. You can google it though.

Put it on a flash drive. Go to the play store and turn off auto updates. This makes all apps manual update from here on out, but nothing you can do about it, otherwise you will wind I with 1.34 again. Then on the shield get ES file explorer. Plug the drive into the shield and use es to find the apk, and select it to install. You will have to jump through the usual hoops to allow es to install non play store files. Should be good after that

[waylo]

You can find it here:
https://apkpure.com/sagetv-miniclien...ad/2101030-APK

I believe this is a reliable source.

EDIT: Oops, didn't see the post above.

[jpwegas]

stuckless, any chance you could re-upload the 1.30 to bintray?

--John

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

stuckless, any chance you could re-upload the 1.30 to bintray?

--John

Unfortunately, I don't have the binaries I had to do a massive clean up on Bintray because they locked the account due to exceeding storage requirements. Sadly they don't tell you beforehand, and they don't actually tell you how much you are using, they just lock the account and hope that you figure it out. So, I purged almost everything. The reason 1.28 was retained, in addition to the latest, was that 1.28 appeared to be the most stable based on reports.

Personally, I'm using the latest on my 2 shields and on my MiBox and I have 0 issues. I try to understand how people have the issues they report and I can't explain it. One thing that I might do differently, is that, I always leave sagetv by killing the application. ie, I long press the "select" button and then select X to close it out. This ensures that the application gets completely torn down.... memory is freed up and caches are cleared, etc. I think it's the same effect as the "close on pause" setting which means that when you leave the app, it will close it out, I just do it forcefully.

Something else that people can try, is clearing the cached data for the app in the android settings. This will force a new client connection and go through that setup (unless you record your client id and then set the same client id). (this would be the same effect if you remove and then re-install the app, if you don't know how to clear cached data for the app).

I'm not sure when there will be a new release of this app. Feature wise there isn't much more I can add. I tend to update after a couple of ExoPlayer releases, especially if I see fixes in there related to mpeg and ts and ps parts. IjkPlayer doesn't appear to be actively developed any longer, so, not sure how much longer that player is going to be around.

I did start to look at rewriting the UI layer using native opengl, but, this is a huge task. Even using LibGDX (an opengl wrapper), it took months to do the UI. I thought that I could probably re-do it in a couple weeks, but, after a couple of weeks, I was still not even close, so, I put that on the back burner

[btrcp2000]

Thanks for that explanation and all you’ve done to bring it this far! The only thing I’m missing is 5.1 sound, which is not that big of a deal. in my limited understanding of the guts of all this, I believe that is a limitation of exoplayer? So I can put it to bed in my head, can you confirm whether 5.1 sound is at all possible?

Thanks either way!

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

Thanks for that explanation and all you’ve done to bring it this far! The only thing I’m missing is 5.1 sound, which is not that big of a deal. in my limited understanding of the guts of all this, I believe that is a limitation of exoplayer? So I can put it to bed in my head, can you confirm whether 5.1 sound is at all possible?

Thanks either way!

Exoplayer allows for bit streaming audio. You need something like an AV receiver to decode it though. 5.1 audio works for me that way, (SHIELD to receiver to speakers and display).

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Unfortunately, I don't have the binaries I had to do a massive clean up on Bintray because they locked the account due to exceeding storage requirements. Sadly they don't tell you beforehand, and they don't actually tell you how much you are using, they just lock the account and hope that you figure it out. So, I purged almost everything. The reason 1.28 was retained, in addition to the latest, was that 1.28 appeared to be the most stable based on reports.

That's annoying that they locked it. If you ever need some place to host future versions I'd be happy to help with that.

Originally Posted by stuckless

Personally, I'm using the latest on my 2 shields and on my MiBox and I have 0 issues. I try to understand how people have the issues they report and I can't explain it. One thing that I might do differently, is that, I always leave sagetv by killing the application. ie, I long press the "select" button and then select X to close it out. This ensures that the application gets completely torn down.... memory is freed up and caches are cleared, etc. I think it's the same effect as the "close on pause" setting which means that when you leave the app, it will close it out, I just do it forcefully.

The Shield works well for me except for mpeg recordings (which is the majority for me unfortunately). It almost immediately hangs and exits shortly after I start playing. I've restarted and reinstalled and tried various options but the behavior is similar. I had read on a Plex or Myth thread somewhere that the MiBox may have better mpeg hardware playback but I haven't tried a MiBox yet.

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'm not sure when there will be a new release of this app. Feature wise there isn't much more I can add. I tend to update after a couple of ExoPlayer releases, especially if I see fixes in there related to mpeg and ts and ps parts. IjkPlayer doesn't appear to be actively developed any longer, so, not sure how much longer that player is going to be around.

I appreciate all the work you've done on this!

--John

[btrcp2000]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

Exoplayer allows for bit streaming audio. You need something like an AV receiver to decode it though. 5.1 audio works for me that way, (SHIELD to receiver to speakers and display).

My receivers that play 5.1 through the hd300 fine, so i know the sources and equipt are correct. In the miniclient (shield tv) i've been playing with this and can't get exoplayer to play at all, let alone audio. it will pull the first frame, or maybe move forward every 15 seconds or so. My sources are HDHomerun Dual and r5000hd dish boxes. Both work fine if I leave the miniclient defaulted to IJK.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

My receivers that play 5.1 through the hd300 fine, so i know the sources and equipt are correct. In the miniclient (shield tv) i've been playing with this and can't get exoplayer to play at all, let alone audio. it will pull the first frame, or maybe move forward every 15 seconds or so. My sources are HDHomerun Dual and r5000hd dish boxes. Both work fine if I leave the miniclient defaulted to IJK.

Yeah, the miniclient for me has had mixed results with Exoplayer and my captured streams (OTA and Comcast CableCard on SD devices). Which is why I still use the HD300s. From what I've read the latest miniclient upgraded the Exoplayer version which has caused problems. I know recordings today are basically unwatchable for me now on the SHIELD. Some have reverted to earlier builds and there is another build coming with an even newer version of Exoplayer. But I do not want to turn off updates or sideload things. When Exoplayer likes the stream 5.1 works fine, but for now I still keep the HD300s around as a backup.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

Yeah, the miniclient for me has had mixed results with Exoplayer and my captured streams (OTA and Comcast CableCard on SD devices). Which is why I still use the HD300s. From what I've read the latest miniclient upgraded the Exoplayer version which has caused problems. I know recordings today are basically unwatchable for me now on the SHIELD. Some have reverted to earlier builds and there is another build coming with an even newer version of Exoplayer. But I do not want to turn off updates or sideload things. When Exoplayer likes the stream 5.1 works fine, but for now I still keep the HD300s around as a backup.

I put in the latest ExoPlayer and things just get worse With every release of ExoPlayer it appears to do a worse job (for sagetv). I used to use ExoPlayer for all my h264 ts recordings, but, now, I have lots of seek issues Not sure how much I'll be able to work around that. And the new exoplayer also has a min requirement on Android 8.

IJKPlayer which is the player that I use mostly (now), is also on life support, with no new fixes/updates in over a year.

Not sure where we go from here. I've looked at the MPV library, and maybe, at some point I'll see if I can use mpv as the player library. The challenge is having to custom code all the player integrations to sagetv protocols, which took a long time for IJK and Exo.

[EnterNoEscape]

I see lots of open issues where people are simply asking what the status of ijkplayer is since nothing has changed in while.

[KarylFStein]

Well, after the latest update I have watched a few things on the miniclient / Exoplayer with no problems after basically nothing working with the last update (OTA or CableCard). The app would just freeze. (Also after the update the icon was the Android logo, but today noticed it was back to the SageTV flower thingy).

Although now I have taken OTA out of the picture, so can't test with that. (I changed my attic antenna a few days ago because it was not working well with the one VHF channel in the area and while that channel comes in crystal clear now all the other UHF channels do not. And I got something that was supposed to be good for "High VHF" and UHF while the previous antenna was just for UHF. Ugh. So switched everything to CableCard for now while I figure out the antenna bit.)

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I put in the latest ExoPlayer and things just get worse With every release of ExoPlayer it appears to do a worse job (for sagetv). I used to use ExoPlayer for all my h264 ts recordings, but, now, I have lots of seek issues Not sure how much I'll be able to work around that. And the new exoplayer also has a min requirement on Android 8.

IJKPlayer which is the player that I use mostly (now), is also on life support, with no new fixes/updates in over a year.

Not sure where we go from here. I've looked at the MPV library, and maybe, at some point I'll see if I can use mpv as the player library. The challenge is having to custom code all the player integrations to sagetv protocols, which took a long time for IJK and Exo.

could sage miniclient be an add-on for something like MrMC or Kodi?
MrMC plays back sagetv recorded files without problem

[oldfolkie]

There is actually a SageTV add-on for Kodi - see: https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...3&postcount=70
It pretty basic and hasn't been updated in a long time, but it works for viewing and playing recordings within Kodi as long as you are still on Java 7.

[VCRUser]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

The Shield works well for me except for mpeg recordings (which is the majority for me unfortunately). It almost immediately hangs and exits shortly after I start playing.

I just noticed the same thing on my MiBox (posted about it yesterday in a different thread). No problems on my Galaxy Tab, though.

[SHS]

Hey Stuckless give the new Raspberry Pi 4 a shot

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by SHS

Hey Stuckless give the new Raspberry Pi 4 a shot

RPi 4 looks awesome, but the RPi 3b seems like it should be plenty capable of running the client. Given the price of even the 4 ($35) it would make a great, cheap client box.

[Tiki]

Can you run Android or AndroidTV on a RPi?
I don’t think the sage Linux placeshifter client works on an ARM processor.
I think there is a version of Windows that runs on RPi, but no idea if Sage Client or Placeshifter will run on that either.

[Zogg]

I'm not sure if you can run Android on an ARM.

But there is Java support on ARM, at least in Arch Linux with OpenJDK. I also saw how to install Oracle Java on Debian linux which also has ARM support.

It just seems like SageTV Client could be made to work on the RPi. I realize there are other parts to the whole package, though, but you would think a dedicated port could work.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by Zogg

It just seems like SageTV Client could be made to work on the RPi. I realize there are other parts to the whole package, though, but you would think a dedicated port could work.

Did you mean "Client" or miniclient here? As the only "full" capital "C" Client is the one on Windows.

If you really were asking about porting the full Client to something other than Intel on Windows - I was curious about the possible options as well and asked here about it but got no responses yet.

--John